The
third volume in the LAPASEC series (Landau-Paris Studies on the Eighteenth
Century), this collection assembles the best contributions to the symposia on
taste and the senses organized between 2007 and 2009 by Peter Wagner and
Frédéric Ogée. The essays address the five human senses in the context of
the Enlightenment discussions of the aesthetics of taste. In the long
eighteenth century, taste was an issue relating to aesthetics, philosophy, art
history, literature and literary history, but also to social history, class
distinctions, and gender. Beginning with an introduction that highlights the
most important aspects by way of occasional looks at their treatment in
William Hogarth’s satiric art, the contribution to this volume are by
younger scholars from France, Germany and North America. Throwing new critical
light on highly controversial issues hotly debated by the arbiters of taste (from
journalists to artists and novelists), the essays presented here are meant to
enrich the scholarly discussion of a major preoccupation of Enlightenment
discourses. Last but not least, the editors hope to draw the attention of the
English-speaking world of research to the promising work of scholars whose
native language is not English. From an occasionally marginalized (mainland)
European perspective in eighteenth-century studies, we shyly proclaim, in the
words of the inimitable Georges Brassens, “nous, au village, aussi, l’on a
de beaux assassinats.